I'll be using a PC lab as a home base to teach Science 8 this year. It should be an interesting experience - essentially it will be as if students have laptops, save for the added mobility of an actual laptop. I'm looking forward to having the ability for students to quickly find information, as well as some transitions between digital and non-digital activities.
A few possible concerns:
1. How much time will it take to "get started"? I'll be using a few tools (Google Docs being my home base) and it will be interesting to see if these "digital natives" are able to pick up on the various tools.
2. How am I going to structure my class to ensure that more than just "fun" happens. My biggest concern with this whole experiment (and Physics 11, which I'll touch on in another post) is the challenge of providing academic struggle for my students. It's all well and good that they look at some videos and make some colourful Prezi's or Glogs or whatnot. It's harder to ensure that there is a level of academic challenge for them.
3. How badly am I going to kill our network :) 20 students on some of the various websites will be an interesting challenge for our wired network. It's amazing how much bandwidth these sites will take if you let them - and we don't really have a choice but to let them. Sadly, unlike some of the better coded pages (YouTube, for example), Glogster, Animoto, etc will all steal as much bandwidth as you have. I credit this to be because the developers believe they are targeting an audience made up of home users with a single connection, and one or two computers.
Thus, we'll see how it all goes - I'll keep you posted!
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